Making nice with the Commission

It's another Sunday night at an airport – I'm off on a story. But my mind is still in Brussels, pondering a bizarre friendly, but bizarre briefing a group of us were given on Friday, by Ed Balls, that most insiderish of insiders in the Chancellor's inner circle.

Mr Balls, after so many years as a Brown aide, was on his first visit as a minister to an EU council meeting, following his appointment as City Minister at the Treasury.

Now, the Belgian capital is a city where the Chancellor of the Exchequer has won few friends, thanks to his habit of shunning most EU ministerial meetings, and delivering stern lectures at those he does attend.

But Ed Balls took great pains to signal a more conciliatory approach.

Echoing the rhetoric of endless British leaders, Balls talked of the need to be at the heart of Europe to defend the UK's national interests. "If you're at the table, in the centre of debates, you can win the argument," he said, channeling John Major circa 1993. "On the big issues that count for the future of Europe, Britain is in the heart of that debate."

Since becoming a minister, Balls has given speeches and written newspaper columns taking a markedly more pro-European line than has been heard from the Treasury in the last few years, mixing calls for reform with pledges to work within the system to secure those improvements.

As a foreign hack who left London in early 1998, it was my first chance to see Balls up close at work, and he was extremely impressive as bright as everyone says he is, but also charming, even funny about his first trip to Brussels.

Not like his boss, in other words. If the Chancellor were an animated cartoon, he would arrive in Brussels with a black cloud hovering a few inches above his head, flashing lightening, and pouring chill rain on his thunderous brow.

But Ed Balls was adamant that his boss was actually rather fond of the EU. A few years ago, he went on, some people thought Brown was dangerously pro-European, and might have to be restrained from plunging Britain into the Euro. That had been an exaggeration but so was the current idea that Brown hated the place, he said. He specifically defended the Chancellor against charges that he is simply disinterested in Europe.

"The Gordon Brown that I know is not disengaged from European issues at all," Ed Balls told us.

Not content with that, Ed Balls heaped praise on the Irish commissioner in charge of the single market, Charlie McCreevy, and hailed the Dutch commissioner in charge of competition, Neelie Kroes, as "brilliant".

Eh? The last time I talked to anyone from the Treasury about Neelie Kroes a feisty Dutchwoman it was for a very deliberate briefing about how her department was no good.

It was only three months ago, what's more. Brown was on his way to an informal meeting of finance ministers in Vienna. Brown's people began briefing that he was about to launch a broadside against the European Commission, accusing Brussels of failing to defend free trade, and buckling to political pressure from France and other protectionist nations.

Just you wait, was the message. The Chancellor was to accuse Europe of "lacking the political will" to make the single market a reality, and lagging behind the United States.

There was talk of a pamphlet to be presented by Mr Brown. He was going to call for the commission's competition arm which has huge powers to break up monopolies and bust open cosy cartels to be overseen by a new "independent panel of experts", tasked with identifying where the Commission is failing in its work.

That humiliating suggestion was born from the Chancellor's belief that "the current system is not working", Treasury sources explained. In particular, Mr Brown feared that Brussels is over-reliant on national civil servants seconded to the EU for a few years, who are vulnerable to political pressure from their national capitals.

The Chancellor was to distribute the pamphlet informing his colleagues of their failings, complete with a bar chart showing the UK in first place, as Europe's most open economy, leaving all others trailing far in its wake, we were told.

The Commission was left seething not least because, a couple of nights before the Vienna meeting, the Chancellor asked Neelie Kroes to stay late in her office so he could telephone her to explain, in person, his disdain for her civil servants – and then he never called.

And now Ed Balls is calling Mrs Kroes "brilliant".

Now here's an important caveat. Gordon Brown has yet to use such language himself. If I had to guess what was going on, I'd be tempted to speculate that it's about broadening the Chancellor's image from flinty finance minister, to global statesman, worthy of inheriting Number 10. Being a European player is part of that.

But the whole thing is still deniable, because the arguments are being tested out through the proxy figure of Ed Balls.

Also, and this may be the simplest explanation: it all forms part of a strategy of making David Cameron seem extreme, and unfit for high office.

Ed Balls strongly criticised the Conservative leader for last week's announcement that British Tories would form a new Eurosceptic grouping in the European Parliament in time for the next Euro-elections in 2009. Cameron should have realised the whole pledge to leave the EPP group in the parliament was a blunder, and made an honest U-turn, Ed Balls said. He accused Cameron of taking an "anti-European position" that had dismayed the City and the business community.

One Labour politician on the pro-European wing of the party told me recently that he was relieved that Cameron was being vocally Eurosceptic on the EPP stuff, as it would "allow Gordon" to chart a more moderate course.

I wonder. I am a distant observer of Westminster politics, but my sense is more that the Brown camp is leaving its options open, or rather, trying to widen its options on Europe. If Cameron is 15 points ahead in the polls in a couple of years time, and picking up support with a sceptic line on Europe, will Ed Balls or anyone from the Treasury – still be making nice with the Commission?